I am finally happy, quite incredibly tired enough with the whole thing to announce the release of my second album, And you will regret it. Recorded now over a year ago, Stand Up! Records, the label to which I sold the rights to the album, and I are communicating through lawyers alone, as I cannot take them anymore in my life. Though never have I received anywhere near so much financial support for my comedy--purchasing one album, a second; paying for a visa, a tour with a friend to shoot a tour documentary; flying me down to Austin and back for a comedy fest; and so on--at a certain point professional and other relations break down. In other words, for some time now the album has been finished, and yet I have repeatedly been denied a release date, so I am in effect releasing it myself.

It's not that I feel the need to air publicly whatever grievances for their own sake, but because in my opinion the incredible, unaccounted for, and continued indefinite delay in the release of the album hurts me in many ways: as someone who cares to put into the world good and meaningful comedy; as someone who attempts to make a living by way of his comedy; and as someone who has a life in which there are others to be cared for and considered. There should never have been the need to present some stand-up through such an over-extended framing, but I feel that at this point I am left with no good choice. The album has become far much more than just the comedy itself, but rather for me an endless (ethical, existential, contractual) ordeal. And so I write this in an attempt to somehow most fully represent what I am trying to do in the world. That is, there is no way to understand what this album of comedy is, or what this, its offering, means, without this, its very long-winded situating.

It's not at all that I would have wished for an hour of comedy developed in part now over two years ago to come out only today, but this is the best that I am left with. It kills me especially because this is material that was so much directed towards what was going on in culture and comedy at the time. Not that this is to say (sadly) that we have moved on completely from whatever human excesses and stupidity, but that this album now is in part something only of a cultural artifact.

In the past, reading about musicians' differences with labels or management conjured up very romantic reasons for their partings of the ways; in reality, though, it can turn out to be the most utterly basic and banal of human discourtesies and -regards (e.g., having the amounts of money freely exchanged to you for your work constantly thrown back into your face as some sort of a reprimand; having your work left to rot behind a procession of endless, inscrutable delays; and, most bewlideringly, being insulted for the work that you put out in collaboration.)

Skipping over a whole lot of stuff, I reached my limit upon the refusal to provide me with even a pre-release date in light of the birth of my child. To throw away my own stupid fucking album is one thing, but, with no regard, to do less than nothing for the fact of my girlfriend's one year of mat leave and our planning for it, I am totally done with it.

All that said, of course, is that the other thing is that Alina and I are due to have a little baby girl (any day now--this past weekend, in fact). It's a crazy thing, and how do you talk about that, but I suppose that at this time things are quite good and lovely and warm, and it's hard to understand how things are shifting, and what place or role comedy will play in the future, etc. That said, though, I'm sure that a whole lot of you have met Alina (on the road, at house shows, in New York, all over) and know how amazing and cool and wonderful she is.

Oh, yes, and thank you so much to the so many countless people and friends who have done and do so much for all the ridiculous comedy/life stuff: every night getting stoned or not with comics, sleeping at god knows whose place, those who come out to shows, those who hang out at shows, those who give something to comedy and the comics so generously, and those just who provide for and comprise the scene.

I guess, to close, the album is called And you will regret it, for now myriad reasons. If you'd like to pre-order a copy, you can get in touch with me, as I will personally have what may be a limited number for sale--video, audio, album art, liner notes, all that stuff--and I'll also include some other album-related miscellanea. Finally, the album is basically about all of the barbarians at culture's gate. Kind of comedy at the end comedy, though not so definitively. (How can anything but comedy address questions of comedy in a way proper to comedy?)

David Gelston, confidant, but also director, editor and cinematographer. Sean K. Robb, whose cover shots my really insisting upon arguably started off this whole falling away of relations. Ram Krishnan, for the Grumpy's home always; and Santosh Lalonde, too, for the music. Chelo Suarez, keeper of the sound and sound editing. Pier Yves Larouche, for the spectral/ephemeral eventual album cover, I can only hope and imagine. Guy-Philippe Bouchard, mon avocat. Alina Maizel, beside me right now.

the existence of man is essentially finite [limited by death, his existence is a 'being for death']. yet we manage movements--of transcendence--towards the world, towards the future, and towards its people

-anxiety, or care: we are always concerned with the future, with what is yet to come

re sex/gender joke - our future is limited by the fact that at the terminus there is always death as the impossibility of possibility // our future is again limited by the fact that our possibilities are not abstract ones, but rather are embedded in specific conditions not chosen by the individual

IRONY

'in irony a man annihilates what he posits within one and the same act; he leads us to believe in order not to be believed; he affirms to deny and denies to affirm; he creates a positive object but it has no being other than its nothingness'

BAD FAITH

is a lie to oneself; the essence of the lie implying in fact that the liar actually is in complete possession of the truth which he is hiding

the cynical consciousness too denies this very denial [this is different from the liar who intends to deceive (others) and does not seek to hide this intention from himself]

i) the one to whom the lie is told and the one who lies are one and the same person, which means he must know in his capacity as deceiver the truth which is hidden from him in his capacity as the one deceived

ii) that which affects itself with bad faith must be conscious of its bad faith since the being of consciousness is consciousness of being

--> but then this whole psychic system is annihilated, as if you deliberately and cynically attempt to lie to yourself, you fail completely in this undertaking --> in actuality, bad faith is precarious: it is the continual vacillation between good faith and cynicism [metastatic] // one can live in bad faith --> the subject deceives himself about the meaning of his conduct

- - - cont. - - -

I am my own psychic phenomena (e.g., my impulse to steal this book), but I am not those psychic facts, in so far as I receive them passively and am obliged to resort to hypotheses about their origin and their true meaning --> hence, I can know myself only through the mediation of the/my other; as I stand in relation to my (e.g.,) Id, self [think of the SERIOUS COMIC]

the opposite of bad faith SINCERITY--that a man is for-himself only what he is // this is a demand, not a state

--> but what are we, then, if we have the constant obligation to make ourselves what we are?

[a comic is in bad faith--is like the waiter ('movement is quick and forward, a little too precious, a little too rapid,...bends forward a little too eagerly,...too solicitous...') look at all the Winnipeg performances etc.: too rigid, too studied, too performed etc. --> it is not comedic or comical // c. the metastatic of in and out of good faith/sincerity (honesty, risk--like 'relationship in peril' jokes) and bad faith (material)]

'but what is he playing? we need not watch long before we can explain it: he is playing at being a waiter in a café' (CBC, club, contextualized performances)

THE CHILD PLAYS WITH HIS BODY IN ORDER TO EXPLORE IT, TO TAKE INVENTORY OF IT; THE WAITER IN THE CAFÉ PLAYS WITH HIS CONDITION IN ORDER TO REALIZE IT.

--> the public demands [of all tradesmen] that they realize their condition [of obligation to realize their condition] AS A CEREMONY [e.g., the function of a comic. their relation to themselves and to their audiences is not comedic, it's not truly comedy or playful, or honest--to themselves or the audiences]

'a grocer who dreams is offensive to the buyer, because such a grocer is not wholly a grocer. society demands that he limit himself to his function as a grocer' // 'there are indeed many precautions to imprison a man in what he is, as if we lived in perpetual fear that he might escape from it, that he might break away and suddenly elude his condition'

[and always, though, 'the comic'--the performance--is not the person, the comedian: 'there is no common measure between his being and mine'

to be a comic

'but if I represent myself as him [the waiter], I am not he; I am separated from him as the object from the subject'... [thereby] 'I cannot be he, I can only play at being him; that is, imagine to myself that I am he'

AND, then--the height of the irony--'in vain do I fulfill the functions of a café waiter'

'[he] is in a sense a café waiter--otherwise could [he] not just as well call himself a diplomat or a reporter? but if [he] is one, this CANNOT BE IN THE MODE OF BEING-IN-ITSELF. [HE] IS A WAITER IN THE MODE OF BEING WHAT [HE] IS NOT'

if the comedic is about a rupturing... [this is the crux: identity // the smallest, most inscrutable // the attempt of transcendence, sustained]

News For And About The Philosophy Profession is how www.dailynous.com, one of my favourite sites, is described. Along with a handful of philosophers or academics, I was asked to contribute my thoughts on the issue of the art of morally troubling artists (those who don't tip well, whip it out, etc.).

All of the six little essays can be found here. What I wrote I've posted below.

More or less, I find most of today’s conversation about art and morality to be pretty banal. I find it very hard to see how anyone actually concerned with art has any interest in the matter other than to put it to rest. For too long it has been too much of a distraction, and good artists should have better things to be doing (i.e. addressing) with their time.

The question What are the (permissible) limits of artistic transgression? can be answered only through art, or, perhaps more properly, the particular piece of allegedly “transgressing” artwork being questioned.

Any attempt to legitimate an artwork (in any way) by reference to a stand-alone code or ethics or standard outside of or other than the artwork itself is something to consider only for those who don’t care about art ultimately. But, then, the question obviously comes: why does their opinion matter?

In a 22-year-old interview with BOMB Magazine, art critic and old man Dave Hickey said, “simply put, the art and criticism that interest me seek to reconstitute what we think of as ‘good.’ Maybe you don’t have to be ‘bad’ to make good art, but I suspect that there is no need for art in an environment where we all agree on what’s ‘good’ and on what constitutes ‘good’ behavior.”

None of this is to say, of course, that criminal courts shouldn’t deal with criminal matters, or, similarly, that other kinds of courts shouldn’t deal with other kinds of non-criminal but similarly expressly legal matters. But, whether it’s for me to tell a guy who cheats on his taxes that he shouldn’t go out and finish his painting anymore, I think, is really beyond my scope. (And, sometimes, too, of course, “courts of ‘public opinion'” can be without rules of procedure, triers of fact, sentencing guidelines, and other such relics of Common, Civil and all other such Law traditions. Full disclosure, though, I am personally not a fan of Facebook.)

The good comic—good ethically and good aesthetically—is the one who calls into question, confuses and provokes the serious. For the comic, the serious is the mark of human folly, vanity, error, and excess. Accordingly, for the comic who cares for the comedic, it is an absolute horror—it is the absolute, the existential horror—that any comedic possibility could be unconditionally proscribed.

Finally, in general it doesn’t matter at all to me to know who or what is behind any work that I like (e.g. Kafka and Giacometti could have been better to their women; Heidegger, to the Jews). In the case of Louis C.K., though, I think back to Joseph Kosuth’s line from the essay “Art After Philosophy“: “a work of art is a kind of proposition within the context of art as a comment on art.”

In other words, Louis C.K. can tell a joke again, but it just better be a damn fine joke.

Comics take heart. When a club that's booked you months in advance then tells you out of the blue that the weekend is no longer yours and gives you no reason as to why or makes any attempt to remedy any of the losses you've incurred in your taking action upon their word and commitment in the fulfillment of your side of what is, in fact, a contract, you are not without an attempt at recourse. Here is a template you may use to receive your redress/what is rightfully yours. Maybe nothing will be able to be done re the entirety of the entire tour that they definitely fuck up, but you will at least be a little more returned to the position that you were in before the contract. (That is to say, I got my money.)

Club Manager X, Booker Y,

I've attached the screenshots of the itineraries and total price of the flights that I cannot use anymore. The total is $400 US and I would like the money by this Friday at 5:00 pm. It can be sent to me via PayPal to the email address ______.

Booker Y has explained to me the confusion with Headliner Z telling you he's bringing in a feature after your already committing to me the four days. Headliner Z 's forgetting or confusing is genuinely an unfortunate thing, but I'm not the one to bear the cost of this.

I have never had a business or contractual relationship with Headliner Z. Your Comedy Club is the one that told me to "lock it in." Similarly, Your Comedy Club is the one that would have paid me.

It appears to be for some sort of business consideration (i.e. not damaging relations with Headliner Z?) that you chose not to tell Headliner Z that you had already told me I had the run.

I'm not at all being facetious when I say that in the long run the value of my flights may very well cost the club less than whatever may have been the repercussions of reminding Headliner Z that you had already given me the four days. It's quite possible it was the right business decision.

It's really too bad that by the time you informed me that the spot was taken, I had already relied upon our agreement and purchased my plane tickets, the return dates of which had expired. That, though, is a risk inherent to this business.

Absolutely none of this would have had to come to this point had you simply done the decent thing and reimbursed me for my losses. It's just the right thing to do. I'm not asking for anything that isn't mine.

Finally, I can assure you that the exchange between me and Booker Y over Facebook constitutes an enforceable contract. Also, I don't think I have to tell you how much of a colossal waste of time this whole thing has been for me, and how outraged I am at having been treated like this.

There is absolutely nothing I can do to make you take my calls, return my emails, or restore me to the position I was in before you both made and broke a contract with me.

But, if I don't receive $400 US by 5:00 pm Friday, what *I* am going to do is serve the club with a demand letter. And, I guarantee you that I will be demanding far more than the value of my lost flights.

Then, if I don't receive the amount in my letter (right now I figure it to be about $1200 US, estimating what I do my lost pay and merch sales), I will be filing a claim in Your County.

I quit my work as a litigator years ago because I did not like that world, but I am absolutely more than happy to go before a judge and see which one of the comedy club or the road comic they find to be the more sympathetic party.

one day I will buy an old computer that has nothing on it but my files. it will be good and old and have no internet and that will be how it will be. it will keep me locked up and away from all that I've ever needed. you will never see me on the internet again ever again. that is all I want and I think I will be better for it. never again will we have to see the kind of shit that we do now. I will buy something and that will be it and then on we will go. we will come to know and to recognize that the one thing we've only ever needed is right before us as it is. we can stall and wait and see all that we can in this way, but then in the end that is all it will be. courage, my love, is what they say when they don't know what else is going on, but at some point we will have to find out that the one thing we cannot do without is whatever it is that we need most. it will just be my writing computer; my joke-writing computer. there will be editing and deleting and that is it. never again will I have to pull out this shit when the truth of the matter is all I have and want to do is the write the jokes that have to be written.

I TAKE it for granted that all people of education will acknowledge some interest in the personal history of Immanuel Kant, however little their taste or their opportunities may have brought them acquainted with the history of Kant's philosophical opinions. --The Last Days of Immanuel Kant

[Incidentally, never no Emmanuelle **** hard or soft

Also, apparently Kant quite regularly held dinner [read: lunch] parties. And it is said of him:

Chiefly, perhaps, with a view to the sustaining of genial hilarity, he showed himself somewhat of an artist in the composition of his dinner parties. Two rules there were which he obviously observed, and I may say invariably: the first was, that the company should be miscellaneous; this for the sake of securing sufficient variety to the conversation: and accordingly his parties presented as much variety as the world of Königsberg afforded, being drawn from all varieties of life—men in office, professors, physicians, clergymen, and enlightened merchants.

I used to do the same thing sort of when I had an apartment in Montreal when I was a law student. On my birthdays I used to have (the most wonderful) parties to which I would invite only those people with whom I would want to go out for coffee. My thinking was that I would not want to have any interaction all evening I would not want to have. Only those people I would want to have even the slightest exchange with I would invite.

What would happen is that there would really be some delightful people meeting each other for the first time. One year a law student friend of mine spoke pretty poorly to a law Professor friend of mine whose face he did not know. He spoke pretty poorly about that very professor to whom he was speaking. It was quite hilarious.

Another time at the end of the night I had to throw up and so I excused myself and thew up. I returned to the two people left at the party and we continued to talk.

Some readers have asked whether Comedy Trouble seeks to expand the realm of comedy possibilities for a reason. They ask, for what purpose are such new configurations of comedy devised, and how ought we to judge among them? The question often involves a prior premise, namely, that the text does not address the normative or prescriptive dimension of comedic thought. 'Normative' clearly has at least two meanings in this critical encounter, since the word is one I use often, mainly to describe the mundane violence performed by certain kinds of comedy ideals. I usually use 'normative' in a way that is synonymous with 'pertaining to the norms that govern comedy.' But the term 'comedy' also pertains to ethical justification, how it is established, and what concrete consequences proceed therefrom. One critical question posed of Comedy Trouble has been: how do we proceed to make judgments on how comedy is to be lived on the basis of the theoretical descriptions offered here? It is not possible to oppose the 'normative' forms of comedy without at the same time subscribing to a certain normative view of how the comedied world ought to be. I want to suggest, however, that the positive normative vision of this text, such as it is, does not and cannot take the form of a prescription: 'subvert comedy in the way that I say, and life will be good.'

But what conditions the domain of appearance for comedy itself? We may be tempted to make the following distinction: a descriptive account of comedy includes considerations of what makes comedy intelligible, an inquiry into its conditions of possibility, whereas a normative account seeks to answer the question of which expressions of comedy are acceptable, and which are not, supplying persuasive reasons to distinguish between such expressions in this way. The question, however, of what qualifies as 'comedy' is itself already a question that attests to a pervasively normative operation of power, a fugitive operation of 'what will be the case' under the rubric of 'what is the case.' Thus, the very description of the field of comedy is in no sense prior to, or separable from, the question of its normative operation.

I am not interested in delivering judgments on what distinguishes the subversive from the unsubversive. Not only do I believe that such judgments cannot be made out of context, but that they cannot be made in ways that endure through time ('contexts' are themselves posited unities that undergo temporal change and expose their essential disunity). Just as metaphors lose their metaphoricity as they congeal through time into concepts, so subversive performances always run the risk of becoming deadening cliches through their repetition and, most importantly, through their repetition within commodity culture where 'subversion' carries market value. The effort to name the criterion for subversiveness will always fail, and ought so. So what is at stake in using the term at all?

ii) it's really quite incredibly kind of Dave to let me stay at his place for so long but if he's working 15-hour days and knows he won't be back till 11:00 each night, why can't he leave me his key? I'll make a point of being around to let him in when he's back. If I leave the house I have to lock the door behind me, and so be out all day, or not go out

iii) these people at cafés have to stop talking so loudly beside me

iv) I know that my birth is fortuitous, a laughable accident, and yet, as soon as I forget myself, I behave as if it were a capital event, indispensable to the progress and equilibrium of the world --Cioran, The Trouble With Being Born

iv) talk more quietly!! why was I so kind to this person* before she started so loudly beside me

*oh, this person is now loudly saying to her friends that she still has the brain tumour. stuff about non-contrast only MRIs while pregnant, too. still too loudly. I could have a brain tumour. If I had a brain tumour, I think I would still want others to enjoy the café

I think I lose the thread more than I have it. You start to wonder and ask yourself or at least sit there and with the nothing to know. The constant, movement, is a reason, a distraction, of sitting in a place and just going and doing you start to do and remember what it means to have once been something more than you are if only now because of the difference of where you’ve been.

You think that somehow a simple sitting will serve but then the thing is that nothing, there is nothing concrete there. Your real work is only in the—not in the interim moments of—the only times you’re not on stage you should not as well be aliving if all it means is that the rushing around is what it is. The coming in your girl is coming and there will be the impli/ramifications of all the activity. You will come to know that you cannot continue as you do. You will need time, and a space, and an income and a way and a means of growing being and better becoming.

There is no other way but then the one which you know of having been the case as you can see. Never before has there ever been something so done with the heart and the head as what we all allege is the only thing that we couldn’t have put together until now.

This morning I had a little coffee and then I woke up and the good things that I did:

-podcast recording

-small breakfast

-swim

-Judy email

-Ian email

-and you left he house, which is not at all a nothing

-you read, and you exposed yourself to, another book written by another comic and seen and learned that the life that they go through is not so much more or greater or glamorous than your own. (how is it possible that a man/comic of Todd Barry’s stature is still doing the same sorts of things that I do? I remember the year last year when I made it so much of a position/mission in my head to visit as many of the states as I could for standup. and then suddenly it all ended when I got together with a girl. where was I when I met Alina? where was I with my life? the only things I have as a way of remembrancing is the show dates on my site. if it weren’t for that I’ve have no or so few memories. it makes you wonder what the point is of accruing all these times and experiences if you take none with you. at the end you just have to go home all the same. you will come to recognize and know that at the end of the night you are left. on the road, on the couch, on the couch of another, always, on the road. no time or any interest to read or do that which doesn’t add to the life of which you are attempting/trying to be a part. you have to learn at a certain time that the only things which will keep you alive are the ones that you don’t or are unable to know or recognize as ok. when will it come that you have some rest? don’t you, don’t you want a/some sort of peace? all you do now is walk around and look at the hands and the hands and the ring hands fingers of the them whose selves you image are somehow somewhere more complete than your own. never will it come to be that there’ll be a sort of a semblance, a rest, a resting of that which you want. you cannot keep moving as if all the time. this is the posting of all the writing)

a nothing, a really, the nothing that you didn’t do is what counts. the real work is always evaded

A friend/person of mine who bought one of my t-shirts tells me that people come up to him and say, "how can you support a monster like Woody Allen?" and he says, "easy, he made Zelig."

And I find it funny because the only reason the t-shirt was purchased was because of the nature of the comedy (which is a bit whatever it is) and so the shirt confronts others with these same questions in the course of their daily lives. And the most beautiful thing then is that my friend then responds with the only, and actual/real, response there can be.

The shirt, then, realizes what it is. (That is, it is a shirt. But it is not a shirt.)

If you're in my town on a student visa and call the gas "petrol" and step out of the car when in line at the US border simply to stretch, then you do notget to dictate to me your thoughts re rideshare expenditure norms.

You put out into the world an of offer of a $50-return trip down to New York and that's what you received. To raise, so indignantly, via text and post-drop-off, the matter of tolls, is, at the very least, unattractive.

All of my troubles are in my head. Another day of indoors after on-and-off and nothing to show. It's the first writing after some time, too. Several weeks ago was recorded another album, the editing of which will have to come before the packaging. (It feels gross, the prospect of having to listen and watch, nothing coming out the way that, in your head, in had been in your head.)

Did you know know that Adorno once wrote that aesthetic self-relinquishment in the artwork requires not a weak or conformist ego but a forceful one. Only the autonomous self is able to turn critically against itself and break through its illusory imprisonment. This is not conceivable as long as the mimetic element is repressed by a rigid aesthetic superego rather than that the mimetic element disappears into and is maintained in the objectivation of the tension between itself and its antithesis?

Well, did you know that?

Boy, anyway, that's kind of really what basically is the album about. (Not that I came to this excerpt before the recording, sadly. You can bet, though, that there'd be rigid aesthetic superego in the album if I had. Yes, sir. Maybe we can edit it in somehow.)

If you're a producer of a comedy show and you have me on your comedy show and you have me on your comedy show to do comedy then don't dock my fucking pay for not doing the things that I did not do which you never asked me to do (and which are outside the purview of my position/role as comedian/comic).

I am not an advertising machine and if I understood that I was to double as your marketing department then I would not have agreed to do your show. Next time, you tell the jokes on stage.

Every manifestation of our life is accompanied by noise. The noise, therefore, is familiar to our ear, and has the power to conjure up life itself. Sound, alien to our life, always musical and a thing unto itself, an occasional but unnecessary element, has become to our ears what an overfamiliar face is to our eyes. Noise, however, reaching us in a confused and irregular way from the irregular confusion of our life, never entirely reveals itself to us, and keeps innumerable surprises in reserve.

Sorry to hear you're feeling lousy, my friend. If it helps, I believe we create for two reasons: 1) To sate the (apparently) human compulsion to establish order and meaning in a terrible, heartbreaking and nonsensical universe, and, 2) To pay bills in a way that's a helluva lot less difficult than stacking heavy boxes.

Your discomfort means the world. Truly sitting on one's own, alone, preferable to the having to go, out, to come home, again, alone. The moving about from city to home to home -- a let in Montreal, to a room to a sofa a place to sit, leaves with no one or nothing. Out there are jokes, the jokes which you don't see, or understand, to be at all any more what the people, should be listening to. ("Who goes to listen to jokes?," is the comics' thing.) Nothing of it moves.

The tour is now over and it's time to get back to sitting in a place all alone and quiet and think/worrying What now? Too much happens (when) on the road for two months and it's hard to retain, but let me tell you that it's easier to move from one place to place to show to high to place than to actually have to make a life of substance. There's a thing or point whereat you're moving so much there's no time for reflection (or perhaps no need, no want?) and it's just kind of diffuse being-there. (Do you know how much easier it is to drink in a motel room alone than it is anywhere else, anywhere else alone, even?) There was one place that was right across the street from a Waffle House and a 24-hour gas station and it was all I needed. There was even a pool (Arizona) and nobody in the pool and nobody in the pool area, even. I only spent one night and a day there, sadly, but the next to place to where I moved on wasn't anything like it, obviously, sadly. (If you are ever on a/the road and need a place to for a quick and friendly and cheap/healthful meal, I cannot more highly recommend Waffle House.)

Hello hello hello. It is tour time. Please let people know that I/we will be in the following cities. Rachael Goldman is a hilarious comic out of Indiana. We did a show together last year and I thought boy is this funny. Let us have some people come out. For good time. Below is the tour poster. Links to show details here.